How to drive effective Business

Continuity Plan
As challenging as it seems, now is the time to rethink and reconsider
everything. This is your opportunity to challenge conventional thinking,
encourage innovation and creativity that can help in business continuity.

The unprecedented times that we are in today, calls for unprecedented

measures. Amid the unchartered territory that businesses are operating in, it
becomes imperative for them to understand the ways to create value out of any
organisational function. It is the expertise and skills to mitigate risks and lead the
recovery efforts for the organizations, businesses and communities that will help
them stay afloat during these times.

As challenging as it seems, now is the time to rethink and reconsider everything.

This is your opportunity to challenge conventional thinking, encourage innovation
and creativity that can help in business continuity.

Any business essentially relies on the effectiveness of Business Continuity Plan

to maintain essential functions during and after any crisis situation. If your
organization doesn’t have one, check if it has a disaster recovery plan (DRP) that
can be leveraged. If it has neither, it’s time to start afresh. After you have your
Business Continuity Plan, follow these five steps to ensure its effectiveness:

Start with a business impact analysis (BIA):

It is very important to first determine and evaluate the effects of any potential
threat for business operations with a BIA. In this process the business will have
to perform a gap analysis to assess the organization’s readiness for continued
operations and performance. When conducting this analysis, consider the impact
on the following stakeholder groups:

Employees – For any organisation, its workforce should be the topmost concern.

The management of staff during such times will have a long-term impact on
employee’s loyalty and retention. The organisation needs to start by identifying
the “critically important” processes and the staff members who execute them.
After this, determine if these processes must be conducted on-premise or if they
can be performed remotely. Additionally, consider any actions that will allow most
of the organization to work remotely. It will be vital to consider building back up
capabilities, in case a chunk of workforce cannot work.

Customers – Such time determine the relationship an organisation will have with
its customers. One misstep could cause long-term reputational damage.
Organisations must closely monitor customer debt levels and regularly assess
their credit risk.

Suppliers — Now, it is also important to determine what supplies or suppliers are

“critically important” to keep the operations running. Organisations can review all
supplier contracts to understand the implications. This will also help in
determining if there are other ways to continue operations if one of the suppliers
cannot deliver goods.

Build scenarios (modelling):

Now, you’ll want to create models for “worst” and “most-likely” case scenarios.
This will provide the organisation with sufficient outcomes that they need to
consider. For example, looking at key stakeholder groups and the risks identified
for each group, you should be able to identify possible strategic, operational and
financial outcomes for the next three, six or 12 months. There might be alternate
business models or new ways to serve your customers.

Risk analysis and mapping:

Organisations have to identify new risks and this step helps with that. Businesses
should consider scenarios (created in step two above) to identify new risks. Other
potential risks such as financial, strategic, operational and external — and the
probability of occurrence should also be considered.

Prioritizing organizational alignment and communication:

Create a cross-functional response to ensure organizational alignment around

key objectives. The organization also need to secure all the governance and
compliance clearance. Also, identify the content and frequency with which you
want to communicate with your stakeholder groups as communicating with
stakeholders is a vital part of every business continuity plan. It is of utmost
importance that there are specific landing pages for employees, customers,
investors, etc., with proper resources and guidance.

Work on an action plan with continuous monitoring:

To make your Business Continuity Plan more successful, Key performance

indicators (KPIs) of priority processes should be focussed upon. Increase the
frequency of measuring and monitoring liquidity, stock, sales, etc. to daily and/or
weekly. Attempt to enable continuous forecasting in key functions and keep
adjusting by leveraging various real time data feeds. Workforce is another
important aspect and we should focus on. Additionally, businesses should have
the ability to continue to serve the customer, as well as maintaining the
production lines and the supply chain.

Business Continuity : You need an innovation

strategy : PK Thimmayya
In these testing Covid-19 times, businesses and individuals are going the extra mile to
decimate the impact of the pandemic. In doing so, one critical problem companies are
facing is managing business continuity. As organisations look to turn current challenges
into a competitive advantage, business continuity plans are being tested and reworked
every day given.

In an exclusive interview with Retail4Growth, PK Thimmayya, CEO- Flemingo Travel

Retail Ltd iscusses ways to ensure business continuity amid COVID-19, future
preparations and more
 
1 What does business continuity mean to you?

-  ability to bounce back from this unprecedented crisis and return to normalcy

-  It is basically to understand the situation at hand, analyse and understand the new normal
business environment, and adapting to it to create a favourable business turn around.

2. Has the current situation forced you to take a harder look at biz continuity? Does it
help you prepare better you for the future?

Yes, the situation being unique and worldwide will force some unique & innovative changes
to be done at the business end. We are using the downtime to plan ahead, being agile and
flexible at the same time to accommodate the ever-changing situations. 

3. Sustainability and continuity are closely linked. Going forward do you think there
is going to be a greater focus on sustainability in this industry? What are your own
plans in this regard?
-  Yes and we had already started moving towards sustainability. One of the big focus for us
this year was to look at environment-friendly and sustainable backend procedures

-  This was evident when we shifted to paper bags and furthermore offer cotton shopping
bags to customers

-  Procedure to reduce packaging waste and various other measures were already being
put in place and we will continue to move in this direction.

-  Plus, we are planning to move towards e-invoice and storing of records on the cloud to
further reduce paperwork.

4. End of the day business is about people. How do you ensure that the concept of
biz continuity seeps into the working culture and staff mindset?

-  staff today are much more aware about the changing environment and are equally
concern about the wellbeing of the company as about themselves. It is all inter linked and
today’s generation is very responsive to external factors affecting the business. Gone are
the days when employees were detached from Management’s vision for the Business

-  We work in a very flat organizational structure and this creates larger accountability and
workload being shared by them. We have already had management calls with about 50 of
our managers across the board to discuss the issues at hand and consult on possible
direction to take for business continuity, since we believe in a very consultative &
collaborative approach.